The invention relates to performing query functions at the vector level. More specifically, the invention relates to using binary arithmetic operations to simultaneously compute results of conditional expression evaluation at the vector level.
Databases are types of data repositories in computerized information storage and retrieval systems. Data housed in a database is structured into tables. A database query supports formulation of relational operations on the tables. Operators are provided in the supporting query language, known herein as structured query language (SQL), to allow data manipulation. Queries may come from users, application programs, or remote systems. A query may specify a specific location, such as, a table or a column in a database to retrieve data from, how to join columns from multiple tables, and conditions that must be satisfied for a particular data record to be included in a query result set.
A column oriented database management system stores content by column, also known as column store. Data that supports a query operation is generally found in vector format. Prior art techniques for performing SQL function evaluation on column stores do not take into account the layout of the data. Specifically, the prior art queries employ decision making logic, e.g. branches, and as such do not leverage the column store layout for efficient processing of queries.